My dear Thomas,
While you are almost always a gentleman, and occasionally a scholar, in this case your slipshod research, conducted with so little regard for the proper scholarly methods and with such blatant disregard for adequate authentication, has left me no recourse but to humiliate you.
The PhD. student, whose name you conveniently omit, was later proven to be none other than Heinrich Hossenpfeffer Smythe, whose only claim to legitimate scholarship was the publication of a joke in the ever popular "Gelachter ist der Grosst Medizin" section of the March, 1994, edition of Reader's Digest.
The manuscript did indeed contain the stylistically incorrect appoggiaturas you mention, but was later sent to a reknowned laboratory in Munich for carbon dating where it was discovered that the questionable ornaments had been altered in the year 1994 by a Bic
pen purchased in a Frankfurt airport kiosk by a young man later identified by the clerk as none other than Heinrich H. Smythe. Further investigation revealed that this pitiful creature had been raised by his mother (incidentally, an avid gardener) to believe that,
being the direct descendent of Ernie, illegitimate offspring of Hilda Hossenpfeffer and Johann van Beethoven, he would eventually fulfill his destiny as one of the musical giants of this generation. Despite the fact that his first and only piano teacher described Heinrich, (who now began to insist that he be called Ernieauch or Alsoernie) as possessing the musical ability of a schnitzel, Heinrich began to compose. Rejection after rejection took its toll upon his spirit, until the fateful day, drunk (he did in fact inherit certain proclivities from
his great-great-great-great grandfather) and tottering on the abyss of madness, he stumbled into the bathroom, where he mistook the magazine bin for the entertainment center, and happened upon the Beethoven manuscript instead of the rerun of Dallas he had hoped to catch. Grasping at this one chance to link himslf to immortality, he pulled
out the now infamous Bic pen, which I understand can be seen in the Beethoven Museum in Bonn, and began to alter the work of the genius himself. What chutzpah.
Had you researched a little more deeply, instead of rushing through in your eagerness to embarrass me, you would have found that following the original confusion over the actual authorship of the composition, the rightful mordents were restored and the piece entered into the archives of legitimate Beethovenry, leaving Ernie to fall ino the obscurity he so richly deserves.
Heinrich now lives in Des Moines where he ekes out a meager living playing the acordion in a beer garden. |
